Chapter 9.1 – Sentence

Stone crunched in their wake as they fled south down the corridor, away from Victor’s hulking pursuit. His laughter had stopped, and been replaced by the ominous, floor-shaking tread of his adamant sarcophagus. A stone broke with a sound like a rifle shot, and Ramdas instinctively flinched and fired another bolt of fire behind them.

Three skeletons leapt from adjacent hallways into the next intersection, swords in hand. Heather didn’t break her stride. She raised her still-smoldering shield in front of her face, and dove through the three skeletons, battering them aside, and trusting in the team at her back to strike them down as they ran. Hooves and ice and adamant all met bone in her wake, and Heather gritted her teeth into a rictus smile.

– complete the mission, maybe Victor’s dumb enough to be lured like the undead. Even if he isn’t, all the better, we can still do our jobs, but now we need to get back out there and they’re going to be crowding the exits –

Ramdas was clearly on the same train of thought, because he barked a sharp shout ahead. “Caballeros, left, now!”

They turned, and the corridor was only twenty yards long, ending in a barracks room. A dead end.

A dead end? Why are we-

“Breaching formation!” Ramdas shouted.

And Heather grinned. Right. No such thing as a dead end, with a breacher team.

Helga fell into position next to Heather, and lifted her hammer. “Let’s make Weathers proud, dearies.”

They raised their shields, and Persephone’s ward vanished in preparation for Helga’s throw. Behind them, stone cracked and crunched, breaking under the titanic weight of the adamant automaton lumbering down the hallway behind them.

“Breach!” roared Ramdas.

Heather shivered as she felt the way Helga warped mass and time around her hammer. The runes on the breaching tool flared to life, tugging at Heather’s arms and legs like an insistent child with sandy hands. Earth, for mass. Gravity and time for the swing, accelerating the throw.

Runes on those fortress bricks will be triggered, Heather thought. And then cool satisfaction washed over her. And they’ll be aimed outwards, not in. Point rune towards enemy, that’s the army way.

Helga threw, and her hammer rocketed from her hand, driving itself into the adamantine bricks of the barracks wall. It hit square in the middle between two support pillars, and the wall stove in. A complex knot of sensation washed over Heather’s skin as the bricks cracked and broke, and runes triggered.

Stone exploded outwards in a spray of shrapnel and hostile magic, rune after rune lashing out. Fireballs erupted, and magical sirens wailed. Lightning crackled out in an arc that blew across the courtyard and smashed a few errant skeletons to the ground.

“Pierce!” Ramdas bellowed, and red bolts of fire shot from his rapier, blowing the pelvis off of a skeleton struggling to rise. Persephone shrieked in fury, and shards of ice flew past Heather’s ear, shattering two more confused skeletons.

“Clear!”

Heather and Helga moved as one, turning left and right respectively, shields raised. A chorus of pings sounded out in the distance, and both knights crouched behind their shields. With unerring accuracy, bolts slapped into Heather’s shield, splintering warded wood and cracking off the corner that her mace and fury had already burned. One skidded against her breastplate and raked sparks off of chainmail.

Pain flared where the bolt struck, but it was the pain of armor stopping the bolt, and so Heather dismissed it. Helga’s shield took seven bolts, which she broke off with a sweep of her hammer.

“Under fire!” Helga shouted.

Ramdas ducked through the breach in the wall. Persephone lay herself down flat along his back to pass through with him, her ward springing back to life around them. Stone behind them crunched, and Heather glanced back to see Victor’s automaton struggling to fight its way through the narrow entrance behind them.

Won’t stop him for long, but it will for long enough.

“Let’s move, move, move!” Heather bellowed, and they broke into a loping run. Another chorus of crossbow strings sounded out from the walls above, too slow. Explosive bolts slapped into the walls of the keep behind them, setting off more runes. Persephone’s ward-bubble dimmed and thinned as lightning and fire discharged along it.

Rock shards clanged off of Helga’s back, and she cried out, stumbling momentarily. Persephone straightened up on Ramdas’ back. “Helga!”

Helga fell to one knee, and then climbed back up to her feet, hefting her hammer. Under her tabard, the steel of her armor had been gashed open, revealing a shallow gouge torn out of her back. Ribs gleamed wet and red underneath.

“Less worrying, dearie, more running!” groaned Helga. “I’ll be fine, move!” She arched her back in pain, but grit her teeth and lunged forward once more, Heather rushing to join her side.

Ribs looked intact, and the wound isn’t more than a half-inch deep, Heather thought. A glance back to Persephone showed the woman wild-eyed, frost creeping and spidering down from her eyes and across her cheeks. “She’ll live, Lieutenant. Keep that ward up!”

The sound of crumbling stone pulled Heather’s attention past Persephone’s shoulder. Her eyes widened as Victor’s adamant shell burst through the hole Helga had made, widening it as he crashed through. Some of the remaining skeletons had begun to boil out of the fortress keep’s door further away. The distance was scant comfort as they raised their crossbows.

There’s nothing but automatons between us and the smelter, Heather thought, hurriedly slinging her shield onto her back. Even Helga can turn fast enough to dodge out of their way. Skeletons behind us, we’ve got the lead now. Victor sent in everything he had after us. He should have kept something in reserve, but he didn’t know the smelter was our target.

Heather took up a position behind the wounded dwarf, and scraped up another burst of adrenaline. “Stay together! Go for the smelter!”

The skin of her back crawled and burned. The adamant automaton behind them was throwing out its hands, blasts of fire joining the crossbow bolts raining down around them. Persephone’s ward held, but sweat ran down her brow from the effort and focus it took to sustain their protection. Her scar-shattered face paled around her scars as she clenched in focus, chanting her litany.

The last of the sentry’s explosive bolts dug small craters into the stone of the courtyard around them. The acrid stench of powdered rock was joined by wisps of bitter-smelling, green gas as poison bolts thudded to the ground at their heels. Bloody red fire, thrown by the undead, splashed against Persephone’s wards. Heather pulled Helga to the left, driving the dwarf out of reach of the first automaton to close. With every fear-driven step, the smelter grew closer and closer.

They pelted past the smelter crucible, drooling white-hot adamant out across the molds. Automaton parts stood ready to be assembled all around them. Up close, Heather could see that each one was meant to unfold and open just as Victor’s had, with a corpse trapped inside.

Undead, working magic, armored in adamant. What could he do with a dozen of these? Two dozen?

All these thoughts passed through Heather’s mind in the blink of an eye, her breath coming ragged and hard in the winter cold. The smelter furnace loomed overhead, the ceramic dome smearing the sky with orange-lit smoke and soot. The occasional splash of sparks cast itself out of the top of the dome, sifting down to dirty what little snow remained unmelted in the radiating warmth of the furnace.

Automatons ran after them, lumbering and slow. Their converging mass screened Persephone from the fiery blasts and arrows being loosed by skeletons behind them. One large, furious fireball from Victor knocked a brass automaton to the ground, and it rose again smoldering. Molten brass dripped down its back and sizzled as it hit the snow.

“Run around, far side!” Ramdas bellowed. They dove through a tightening cordon of automatons, skeletons haring across the courtyard as fast as their bones could take them. Hearts pounding, the knights threw themselves down behind a berm of raw ore waiting for the smelter.

“Now, Persephone!” Heather shouted.

Persephone threw herself down onto the cold stone of the courtyard, behind Helga’s upraised shield and armored body. Her eyes narrowed in focus. A look of furious determination washing over her as the ward around her thickened and gelled, colder and colder, the air itself chilling until it ran in liquid rivulets down the bubble of the dome. Stones underneath squealed in cold-tortured agony as temperature differential snapped rock apart.

A ball of ice twice the size of Persephone’s head appeared in the furnace, surrounded by molten metal hovering at two thousand degrees centigrade. The ice flashed instantly to steam. The steam expanded to seventeen-hundred times its volume in the time it took for Heather’s left eyelid to twitch a fraction of a millimeter downwards.

Around her, the world ended.

Even through the ward, the bang was deafening. A gigantic hand slapped Heather down against the ground and then sent her bouncing a few inches back up into the air in its wake. A hard ringing filled her ears, a wooziness rolling through her skull reminding her of her concussion weeks prior.

Sparkling lights filled her vision, white-hot sparks dulling to orange and yellow smears. Steam and smoke and dust obscured her vision as she staggered upright. Ramdas was crawling on his belly towards Persephone. His mouth worked, neck muscles straining as his face darkened, shouting. Heather couldn’t hear it, not one word.

She fell over, tripped over something.

Helga.

Helga’s nose was a smashed, red mess, where her shield had struck her. Her eyes were watering helplessly, hands clutched to her face, her broken nose streaming blood out onto the stone. Heather crawled over, and touched her hand gently to Helga’s face.

Just the basics. Too dizzy for anything more. Numb the pain. Little flows of lightning, just tiny ones, then earth for the nerves, numb them out.

Through the haze, she lifted her eyes, and blinked in dumb wonder. A gray, drooping wave of adamant stood frozen around the spot they’d taken shelter behind. The inner curve was perfectly smooth and round, hardened where the metal had slapped into Persephone’s ward. Like candle wax, the metal ran and dribbled in long, liquid rivulets gone glossy and solid in the cold, but still glowing from the latent heat within.

Helga sat up slowly, hands trembling, her eyes widening as she looked around.

The courtyard was a mess. Gray splatters of adamant metal lay in slugs around every surface. What few automatons were still moving were so fouled by the metal that they struggled just to shift a limb, reaching for the Knights in futility.

Every skeleton left in the courtyard was covered in metal or shattered by the blast. From the far end of the fortress, a few were still boiling out of the doors, but everything else pursuing them had been lost.

Victor’s automaton had been fouled by the adamant as well. Gray metal covered one glass lens of the automaton’s helmet. His left arm was scarcely moving, metal creaking protest as he staggered back towards the south wall.

From very far away, Ramdas’ voice cut through the ringing, faint and tinny. “Persephone! Matthewson!”

Persephone was stirring, her unarmored flesh spackled and burned with bits of adamant shrapnel. As Heather struggled to stand and pull Helga to her feet, Persephone tried to rise, fell, and rose again. She collapsed atop Ramdas’ back, and the centaur slowly stood beneath her.

Helga staggered over to Ramdas, and helped push Persephone into some semblance of balance atop Ramdas’ back. Heather gestured towards the explosives shed, left unguarded in the fortress’s pursuit. They shambled forward, together.

A crash sounded out behind them as the southern fortress wall shuddered, and then fell. Victor’s automaton clawed great hunks of adamantine rock out with its good arm. Defensive runes flashed to light around him without the slightest bit of effect on that gleaming, impregnable sarcophagus.

Can’t stop him, Heather thought with dismay. Maybe with explosives. He’ll be outside by then. Gate. Need to open gate. Get help. They can’t have missed the blast, and all the sparks.

Around them, hot slugs of adamant rained down, occasionally bouncing off of Heather’s helmet or back. One struck the top of the head of an advancing skeleton and punched straight through the bone, as the tremendous density of the metal and height its drop lent it all the force of a bullet.

Heather turned weakly to meet the next two skeletons. They leapt on her, too fast for her staggered, blast-deafened mind to react to. Sharp finger-bones raked in futility against her breastplate, and the teeth of one skeleton sank into her right cheek. Heather barely felt it.

Not good enough now, she thought distantly. Hope you break your teeth on my bones, bastards.

Clumsy slaps of her mace and shield failed to drive them off of her, until a spear of ice shrieked out of Persephone’s mouth and froze one to the ground. Helga’s hammer slapped the other one down, and crushed its skull.

“Caballero, you are okay?”

Heather shook her head. “No, sir. Not even close.”

“Nor I,” Ramdas admitted. “Tough luck, si?”

“Tough luck,” Heather rasped in agreement.

Ramdas’ strong hands pulled Heather back to her feet, and they broke into a jog once more, breath heaving, heads ringing and pounding in pain. Persephone could barely hold onto his back, and her ward around them flickered and stuttered as her focus wavered.

“Explosives unguarded now,” Heather panted, gesturing to the shed.

“Then we use them, Caballeros,” Ramdas replied, and threw open the door.

Boxes of paper-wrapped cylinders lay stacked carefully in the small shed, ignition wires leading to neatly-braided ends. The rattle of bones was distant, but coming closer. Disorganized masses of skeletons were leaping from doorways and windows in the fortress. Victor’s automaton disappeared into the hole it was clawing in the wall. While he focused on his escape, his forces milled without clear purpose.

“How many should we use?” Ramdas asked.

“Much as we can carry,” Helga replied. “Rather use too much than too little now.”

Hastily, they scooped up a box under each arm and ran, staggering and stumbling towards the fortress gate. What few sentries remained on the walls had spent their best ammunition. Now it was mostly the silent, regular crossbow bolts that hit the stones around them.

Persephone’s ward flickered again, and Ramdas lurched forward with a cry as a bolt caught a seam between his barding, and sank deep into the side of his belly. He stumbled, and Persephone clung desperately to his waist to keep from being thrown off. The motion made the bolt sway, and Ramdas let out an involuntary scream. Flames licked past his lips with his shout.

“I’ll secure it,” Persephone murmured, and she cupped her hands around the haft. A sob wracked through her, her composure breaking apart in concern and fear.

When her hands lifted away, a plug of ice lay frozen to Ramdas’ barding.

It isn’t perfect, but it’ll keep it from moving further inside him, Heather thought. “C’mon, Lieutenant. We still got a job to do, right?”

“Si,” Ramdas answered, voice strained. “We rest when we are finished.” The centaur took a few more tottering steps, and paused to give Persephone time to right herself. More bolts clattered off Heather and Helga’s shields, and then the arrows stopped.

Finally out of ammunition, Heather thought, shoulders slumping in relief.

The heavy steps of Victor’s automaton cracking stone rang out across the courtyard. Heather looked back in time to see the automaton climb to the parapets of the south side of the fortress. It threw out its hands towards them, and Heather’s eyes widened.

Fire. We’re carrying explosives!

Even from halfway across the fortress courtyard, her skin felt warm. The flows of fire being woven around those adamant hands drew on terrible anger.

Victor’s furious. He’s pouring his heart into this one. That fireball is going to be too big. Even if we hide behind our shields and ward, he’ll blow the explosives before we reach the gate.

“Caballero!” bellowed Ramdas, following her stare. “Ideas, now?!”

Heather opened her mouth, closed it, gaping. The memory of screaming horses filled her mind, and she bit down on her lip until she tasted blood.

Bjorn and Njorn, lying in the dust, screaming and waiting to die. That’s his fault, too.

Anger swelled in her, fury, and embers sprang from her back and hair. She instantly swept them away as she realized she was still holding a box of dynamite in her hands.

No, no magic. Think. Act.

Fire, bright and terrible, leapt from the automaton’s hands, arcing down towards them from atop the tower. It was a fireball as large as Heather’s house back in Bastia, roaring majestically like a monster on the hunt.

Heather wrenched open the box of dynamite, and grabbed a bundle from within. With all her might, she hurled it up into the sky. Dynamite and fireball met high overhead. With a thunderous bang, dynamite detonated, dissipating the fireball into a hot cloud of glowing flame.

“Run run run run run!” Heather bellowed, as cinders and motes of fire began to fall around them. She kicked her box of dynamite ahead of her, then scooped it up and threw it at the gate.

Ramdas and Helga dumped their dynamite unceremoniously at the foot of the gate, and Helga slapped her hammer against the ground while the Knights around her scrambled away. Rock rose to engulf the explosives like a bowl.

She’s shaping the blast, Heather realized. Making sure it will hammer the gate. Too much adamant to blow through. Just hope the hinges aren’t ready for an explosion from the inside!

Helga bolted back to Persephone’s side, her shield carefully guarding her side, and they huddled on the far side of Ramdas.

The centaur turned, and fired a single red bolt from his rapier into the stone. The drilling light lit the gate in a blinding flash, and a little rivulet of molten stone ran from the hole the beam was drilling.

With a short, sharp bang, the gates blew off their great hinges, and fell majestically to earth. They landed with a crunch of shattering stone and a tremor that rattled up Heather’s legs. A dense cloud of white smoke rose from the blast. Beyond the gate, lights bobbed and weaved, growing steadily closer.

How’s that for a signal? Heather thought, and dared to smile.

The entire town of Frostmoor seemed to be charging in. Runes on weapons and armor glowed in the distance, furious and frightened hedgemages holding whatever weapons or armor they’d thought to conjure. Behind the orderly lines of House soldiers stood unruly families of miners, hunters, traders, charging desperately for the destroyed gates.

Three thunderous bangs sounded from the fortress walls in response. Heather’s heart froze in her chest, grief shooting blue flame through the tips of her mace. The artillery!

Fire began to light the southern crest of the wall again, illuminating a pack of skeletons finally forming up, organized, advancing on the knights. Overhead, Victor’s automaton was shaping another roaring ball of fire together. His voice boomed back from above the fortress walls. “I’ve won everything, Blackthorne! And when we come back for you and yours, I’ll carve the rest of your town to the bone, too. You can watch and count every last bloody one!”

His furious diatribe bought Heather enough time to turn and shout. “He’s getting ready to cast another! Get to cover!”

“Nay, dearies,” snarled Helga, unslinging her hammer, and passing it to Persephone. “Stand your ground. I said I wanted that bastard’s head under my hammer.”

Persephone reached under Helga’s shield. Her hand emerged holding one more thick sheaf of dynamite that the dwarf had hidden there. Without hesitation, she grit her teeth and pressed the dynamite to the hammer’s head. Ice flowed from her fingers, and formed a tight ball around it.

Helga picked it up, and smiled at Persephone. “Thank you, love.”

And then she turned, and hurled the dynamite-laden hammer straight at Victor.

Heather fell to one knee in the wake of the throw, the pull of the hammer’s runes skewing her balance. Helga’s hammer flew faster than her eye could follow, rocketing across the yard. The dwarf’s aim was good.

The hammer caught the automaton square in the center of its face. The explosives frozen to it detonated, knocking Victor back over the wall with a surprised shout. His fireball overhead decayed into lingering flames. A flume of ice and water sprayed high into the air over the fortress on impact, and a loud cheer rose in response from the charging soldiers.

Helga fell exhausted to her knees, staring at the cloud of smoke drifting away from where Victor had stood. A mixture of humour and sadness crossed the dwarf’s face then. “Oh, dearies. That was my only hammer.”

Too exhausted to move any further, the knights crouched in cover and watched as Frostmoor’s people moved in, and took their revenge. Hammers and cudgels conjured in the hands of soldier and townsfolk alike, swung and fell on the few remaining skeletons with zeal. The automatons were engaged at a distance, conjured ice and stone rooting them on the spot. Then came spells and pickaxes, used to bash and tear through armor and ticking clockwork underneath.

I’d call it a massacre, except all the victims are already dead, Heather thought. Some of the skeletons she watched didn’t put up a fight. Some threw up their hands as if frightened, and others obligingly held still to be struck down. A few, a desperate few, clustered together and fought like soldiers, with shields tight and swords and spears well-perched.

Those were summarily wiped out when Ambrose and Faruza converged together. A howl from the werewolf whirled magic around Ambrose, and the man’s fingers flew across his abacus at blinding, blurring speed. In an instant and a burst of iron pellets, it was over. Twelve skeletons fell, skulls neatly shattered by bullets they’d never had a chance to see coming, or counter.

Still other fighters proved their mettle. William Juillard, the man that Ramdas had once duelled, led an organized and disciplined group of a dozen townsfolk. Heather tracked their progress by the tug of their flows and magic as they flushed the fortress keep of stragglers.

They emerged with two men dead, for seven skeletons and an automaton dragged out in parts behind them, his broadsword brandished high and proud.

As William passed Ramdas, the centaur pointed to the scar his rapier had left on William’s hand, and Ramdas smiled. “Better spent on these horrors, isn’t it, Senor?”

William gave the centaur a respectful nod. “It is.”

***

Heather Blackthorne woke as she did every morning, her screams echoing off of the stone walls of the barracks, hands reaching out for the bodies of a husband and son.

Heather tried to sit upright, and the world pitched crazily around her. A dry heave rolled up her gullet, and she turned and spat off the side of the bed, panting for breath. “Are we on a boat, Ooluk?”

“No, Knight Heather. The doctor had to fix your ears, like he did for the man you saved at the Sending gate. He says you will be dizzy until your ears learn which way is down again.”

How many explosions? Heather found herself wondering. Foundry, gate, dynamite for the fireball, all of those explosive bolts, Helga’s hammer. The artillery. Yeah. I guess my ears were overdue for a doctor’s attention. We all are.

Heather swayed, and then carefully laid her head back down on the soft pillow. Her fingers found the gauze neatly taped to her face over her cheek, where the skeleton had bit her. The world swayed and tumbled around her with every motion. Opening her eyes again helped. Morning light leaked through the narrow arrow-slit. Outside, she could hear the winter wind whistling against the stones of Frostmoor Fortress.

Ooluk sat on a chair beside her bed, his bandaged eyes inscrutable, and his body slumped in exhaustion. Heather gave his hands a gentle squeeze.

“How many, Ooluk?” she whispered, after a time.

When he hesitated, she spoke again. “How many dead, Ooluk?”

“Twenty-one,” the little blind elf answered reluctantly. “Seventeen in the fighting here. Four in town. A mother. Three of her five children.”

Heather nodded jerkily, and shuddered out a long breath. Every last one is on you, Victor LaPaix. You and all your pathetic, grave-robbing friends.

I can’t protect anyone. I can’t even protect my own family. But I’m going to avenge them, you motherless filth. One day, I swear, I will find you again. I’ll finish this. You didn’t win a thing. We won. And every living soul left will tell you so.

It was a hollow thought. The memory of grave cairns, half-grown sunflowers wilted and dried in the winter snows, filled her mind’s eye.

Ooluk must have sensed her thoughts, and gave her hands another squeeze. “Every one of them that lives has the Knights to thank,” he murmurs. “And when their grief eases enough to uncloud their hearts, they will remember. Because of you we will plant three sunflowers in spring. Not fifty.”

Heather closed her eyes, and finally let the sobs come.

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29 Comments

Cicero
on January 24, 2016 at 2:00 pm

this is not good, isn’t it? Victor not being confirmed dead means he is still alive and even has a number of admantium automatons with him. And since undead won’t fatigue, he can just attack about anywhere. And who would expect an attack by an undead audmantium army nonethless how to destroy them.

I’m going to call this series of posts “fun with conjuration”. They will be broken up one idea per post if possible; otherwise this would be a lloonngg post. These are playing with the conjuration effects of the world. One of them, conjuration of antimatter, was already covered in comments under /2015/03/15/interstitial-1-selected-readings/.

Post: 1 of ???

Idea: What is the relationship of conjuration and ambient pressure?
If there is none, conjure a diamond sphere, then start conjuring hydrogen inside it. As proved by diamond anvil techniques, with a sufficiently thick diamond sphere you can take the hydrogen all the way to metallic hydrogen. If harnessed as a deliberate containment failure, this is an insanely powerful pressure bomb. If harnessed within containment, this makes pressures obtainable by modern engines look like a toddler holding his breath in comparison. Either way, this would be a way to get a lot of energy out of conjuration – whether you could get more than was spent is up in the air due to lack of me having solid numbers for calculation. So assume conjuration against pressure takes equivalent energy to the energy required to generate that pressure – that’s a less-exploitable system. Then:
…all standard conjuration effects have to be adjusted for the local atmospheric pressure.
…conjuring compressible substances, e.g. gasses, takes less energy than conjuring equivalent masses of incompressible substances.
…conjuring anything in largely incompressible mediums is extremely difficult.
…if the amount of energy you put into a conjuration can be controlled and quantified, you can use conjuration successes and failures as a measure of the compressibility of a medium.
…which means conjurers could find voids in solid objects by finding where they can and can’t conjure.
…you could protect a room from conjuring without using magic by pressurizing it sufficiently. Of course, this comes will all the other problems of high-pressure environments, so it is largely unworkable for protecting living things.
The heroes recently used a combination of temperature and pressure differentials to explosively disassemble a smelter, so some of this is clearly workable.

All of my notations on this series are more or less going to amount to “A Joule is a Joule (except when the story needs it to be otherwise)”. 😉

> What is the relationship of conjuration and ambient pressure?

Conjuration energies are affected by ambient pressure. Yes, conjuration of pressurized materials is possible, and would represent a very dangerous physics experiment/weapon. But you have to ‘pay’ for the energy of that pressurization.

So yes, you can conjure hydrogen at sufficient pressures to metallicize it, but you’ll have to expend that energy to pressurize it, and then sustain some Thaumatic output constantly to maintain the existence of conjured matter.

> …all standard conjuration effects have to be adjusted for the local atmospheric pressure.

No. The Thaumatic requirement remains constant, and is based on the mass of the conjured (and sustained) mass. (Exceptions to this: You still have to pay for pressurization, temperature, relative velocity, and free electrons in your chemical formulas. Salt’s cheaper than nitroglycerine.)

I’m going to call this series of posts “fun with conjuration”. They will be broken up one idea per post if possible; otherwise this would be a lloonngg post. These are playing with the conjuration effects of the world. One of them, conjuration of antimatter, was already covered in comments under /2015/03/15/interstitial-1-selected-readings/.

Post: 2 of ???

Idea: What is the relationship of conjuration and internal pressure?
If there is none, then conjuring degenerate matter is just as easy as conjuring the same mass of uncondensed matter. This would be a way to get more energy out of conjuration than what would be spent, either in uncontrolled fashion (bomb), or controlled fashion (pressure engine). So assume conjuring compressed matter takes the same energy as conjuring uncompressed matter and compressing it – that’s a less-exploitable system. Then:
…the easiest conjuration has internal ambient pressure – anything higher or lower is harder.
…an interesting question arises: is the “ambient” pressure based on the conjurer’s environment or the environment where the conjuration appears? Is it easier to conjure metallic hydrogen into a diamond anvil? This is unbalanced and exploitable either way, but to really show this, I have to move onto relative velocity (later post).

Currently unknown. It *is* known that higher pressure conjurations cost more energy. Nobody yet has a means to determine with sufficient precision if colder materials cost less or more energy. Please submit your research application to Teferi’s Academy of Metaphysics. Owing to the Pressurized Vault Incident, please be aware that your application will require co-signing by the Holy Guild of Engineers prior to construction of experimental apparatus.

> …an interesting question arises: is the “ambient” pressure based on the conjurer’s environment or the environment where the conjuration appears?

An excellent research question to pose to Teferi’s Academy of Metaphysics.

> Is it easier to conjure metallic hydrogen into a diamond anvil?

Currently unknown! Your restraining order from Teferi’s Academy of Metaphysics has arrived!

I’m going to call this series of posts “fun with conjuration”. They will be broken up one idea per post if possible; otherwise this would be a lloonngg post. These are playing with the conjuration effects of the world. One of them, conjuration of antimatter, was already covered in comments under /2015/03/15/interstitial-1-selected-readings/.

Post: 3 of ???

Idea: What is the relationship of conjuration and internal temperature?
If there is none, conjure up a ball of hydrogen at steller-interior levels of heat. This would be a way to get more energy out of conjuration than what would be spent, either in uncontrolled fashion (bomb), or controlled fashion (steam engine). So assume conjuring heated matter takes the same energy as conjuring ambient temperature matter and heating it – that’s a less-exploitable system. Then:
…the easiest conjuration has internal ambient temperature – anything higher or lower is harder. Ice conjurations can be exploited for energy.
…our heroes just illustrated exactly what happens when temperature differential plus pressure differences are used in a largely uncontrolled manner: ice + furnace = boom.
…an interesting question arises: is the “ambient” temperature based on the conjurer’s environment or the environment where the conjuration appears? Is it easier to conjure molten metal into a furnace? Ice into a freezer? This is unbalanced and exploitable either way, but to really show this, I have to move onto relative velocity (a later post).

Yes. The Imperial Security authority has reviewed your research proposal, and we regret to inform you that it has denied it on the grounds of imperial security, misuse of crown property, and lunacy.

> …an interesting question arises: is the “ambient” temperature based on the conjurer’s environment or the environment where the conjuration appears? Is it easier to conjure molten metal into a furnace? Ice into a freezer?

Presently unknown. The Imperial Security authority and Teferi’s College of Metaphysics disclaim and disavow any endorsement of the control measures required for the veracity of this this experiment. Sir, please stop trying to put that mage in the smelter.

I’m going to call this series of posts “fun with conjuration”. They will be broken up one idea per post if possible; otherwise this would be a lloonngg post. These are playing with the conjuration effects of the world. One of them, conjuration of antimatter, was already covered in comments under /2015/03/15/interstitial-1-selected-readings/.

Post: 4 of ???

Idea: What is the relationship of conjuration and relative velocity?
If there is none, conjure up a ball of water at near-lightspeed velocities. This would be a way to get more energy out of conjuration than what would be spent, either in uncontrolled fashion (kinetic weapon), or controlled fashion (turbine). So assume conjuring moving matter takes the same energy as conjuring unmoving matter and moving it – that’s a less-exploitable system. Then:
…this is still exploitable.
…to start out with, since conjured matter can push around unconjured matter, conservation of momentum is broken. To show this, move the conjurer. If the conjuration appears at the same momentum as the environment, then it can push on him, changing his momentum with respect to the environment without substantially changing the environmental momentum. If the conjuration appears at the same momentum as the conjurer, then the conjuration can push things around in the environment without respect to conservation of momentum.
…to really see this, move the conjurer to, say, 1/10th C. Either the conjured mass comes out with a velocity relative to the environment (really high energy available, either as BOOM or otherwise) or the conjured mass comes out with velocity relative to the conjurer (same, but more lethal to the conjurer, unless you have also moved a relative-velocity exploiter up to speed with him).
…even if the conjured mass has only the mass equivalent to m=E/c^2, where ‘E’ is the energy the conjurer uses, relativistic mass can exceed rest mass. So conservation of momentum and energy are broken at a minimum.
…the same trick (change the conjurer’s environment and use relative differences), can be exploited using temperature and/or pressure, but to a far lesser degree since the conjurer’s environment has hard limits based on biology.
…planetary drive: put the conjurer more than 5 meters above the ground. He conjures a ball of ice, which falls. The ice picks up momentum towards the planet, but the the planet picks up equivalent momentum in the opposite direction, assuming the ice vanishes before it hits (hence the height – fall is about 5 meters in one second). The absolute velocities are different by many, many orders of magnitude, but rinse and repeat and a conjurer can move the planet around. And yes, I realize it would require ludicrous amounts of time, but still, the ideas seems solid.

What it boils down to is that, since velocity is relative rather than absolute, by changing the relative framework of the conjurer and the environment, there are conservation-breaking exploits. The same goes to a lesser degree for temperature and pressure – those do have absolute scales, but the upper end of both scales is open-ended and energy can be extracted from relative differences (with varying efficiency of course).

Relative velocity* to the caster’s frame of reference requires additional energetic input. Thus, conjuring a moving ball of ice is more energetically demanding than conjuring a stationary ball of ice. (Hence, Teferi’s Stationary Ball of Ice being a benchmark of Thaumatic conjuration measurement in the Standards of Metaphysical Measurement, in Interstitial 1.)

(*:at the moment of conjuration!)

> …to start out with, since conjured matter can push around unconjured matter, conservation of momentum is broken.

Conservation of momentum is broken, yes. (All attempts to reconcile it resulted in planet-smashing differentials in momentum, and furious shouts between co-authors of ‘relative to what?!’. Sorry. You’ll just have to accept that a universe with magic has to be a little broken.) Clever exploitation of this via the summoning of any of Maxwell’s Choir is discouraged, as thermal runaway tends to become a self-correcting problem when the Mage responsible is immolated in their own hubris.

> …planetary drive

Sir, Special Finances Division would like a femtosecond of your time. If you’d just step into this circle? Thank you.

I’m going to call this series of posts “fun with conjuration”. They will be broken up one idea per post if possible; otherwise this would be a lloonngg post. These are playing with the conjuration effects of the world. One of them, conjuration of antimatter, was already covered in comments under /2015/03/15/interstitial-1-selected-readings/.

Post 5 of ???

Idea: Conjuring inside something.
This is clearly possible – see ice conjured into heads to kill during Offshore Accounts. Either the ability to detect and/or prevent conjuration is much, much easier than the ability to conjure inside or people with the conjuration ability are capable of nearly indetectable assassination. If conjuration can’t be easily detected or defeated, every conjurer can kill nearly at will within his/her range and there is little proof that they are responsible – the evidence vanishes and the results, if small enough, are indistinguishable from a stroke. Yes, if this happens too often then the person will be suspect, but with anything like a “innocent until proved guilty” jurisprudence, many, many people will die before the conjurer gets caught (with a “guilty until proven innocent” jurisprudence, a conjurer with local credibility can redirect blame easily). It gets worse with a smart biochemist: potassium poisoning is almost impossible to prove even in our world, where excess potassium can still be identified in the body; in the story world nothing but the stack of bodies would work as solid evidence.
Some applications such as non-invasive surgery are possible with this, but the world already has healing that appears to be better than that. There are also some industrial applications of this (see later section on conjuration chemistry) but primarily this capability is just a ~!@#$%^&*()_+ scary assassination tool.

The detection of conjuration is difficult except at close ranges, because the amount of Thaum required to sustain most conjurations is very small. But countering a conjuration magically is, likewise, trivial. Good defensive wards usually include that prevention as a matter of course.

As such, yes, it’s a very common assassination tool (and so people who have reason to fear assassination defend themselves appropriately).

Happily, as any Detective will tell you, most murders are crimes of passion. And being crimes of passion, they tend to involve big magic, not subtle magic. So for the average person, this is no more of a realistic threat than being shot by a crazy bastard with a gun. But a politician, someone of power? They will certainly have appropriate security, based on risk exposure.

Conjuration poisoning represents an entirely different threat though. I’ll defer to the excellent treatment of conjuration in “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”, as the treatment of that threat is pretty exhaustive. In short: Don’t try to breathe your own conjured air unless you’re *absolutely* sure you’ve been back to breathing regular atmospheric oxygen for a while. Because when all of that conjured air abruptly vanishes from your tissues and bloodstream (and plays hell with whatever it has chemically reacted with in the meanwhile), You’re In For A Bad Time.

I’m going to call this series of posts “fun with conjuration”. They will be broken up one idea per post if possible; otherwise this would be a lloonngg post. These are playing with the conjuration effects of the world. One of them, conjuration of antimatter, was already covered in comments under /2015/03/15/interstitial-1-selected-readings/.

Part 6 of ???

Idea: Conjuring life
There are several instances of conjuration shown or hinted at that are at least as complex as simple life – for example, one of the rhymes talks about conjuring food. Food is made from formerly living things and usually contains lots of bacterial life if nothing else, so the ability to conjure food already contains the ability to conjure simple life. Unless life is inherently different in this system from other chemistry (see talk about souls later) then conjurers can conjure it. And conjurers in this system already routinely conjure items that they do not and indeed cannot fully understand due to their inherent complexity – Corbin conjures a silk rope and I seriously doubt he understands the full polymer chemistry, electron shell structure, nucleus structure, and complex physical structure of it.
Of course, conjurations vanish when done, so conjuring something means killing it. Life does continuously exchange materials with the environment, so theoretically if you kept a conjuration up long enough, the organism would eventually be independent of conjuration. This works after the first reproductive cycle for prions and viruses, would take several reproductive cycles for bacteria, and would take far too long for anything multicellular. But the ability to conjure a virus that you only have to maintain for a few hours for it to be independently viable is ~!@#$%^&*()_+ frightening. Even worse, since energy-to-matter works in this system, they can conjure actual viruses. Since these conjurations are very small, and combining it with the ability to conjure inside of someone, this is a nearly invisible assassination tool – the target doesn’t even start symptoms until well after the conjurer has struck. See http://www.livescience.com/48386-deadliest-viruses-on-earth.html for examples. And it gets far worse – since conjurers can produce things that they don’t understand, it is entirely possible that they could create custom-symptom and/or custom-target viruses. I suspect this has already happened – see the Rise of the Pope story on the plaque that it took a miracle to stop. If it is possible for such plaques to use and or affect the host’s magic then the phrase is “extinction level event.”
But there is a far more interesting use of this: the one-man clone army. Think Naruto, shadow clone technique. I am going to presume the duplicates don’t have a soul, so they can’t use magic, but otherwise the conjurer has a bunch of diposable clones to throw around. Really, just read some of the Naruto fan fiction for the insanely possible uses of this.
There’s a far darker version: cloning disposable others. You can interrogate, torture, or outright kill the clones without the source necessarily knowing. If you can custom-design clones, think of the sexual possibilities too (really not going into detail here). Or, on a brighter note, conjure an instant expert – someone with the knowledge you want and the willingness to talk.
Of course, speculation on summoning people falls apart if a soul is necessary for cognition in this system. But there are still a number of uses for temporary dead bodies, human or not…

Conjuring life is possible, yes, however they will not have a soul and will not be independently capable of magic. And yes, as soon as the flows of conjuration are released, that life form would cease to exist, ‘killing’ it.

> This works after the first reproductive cycle for prions and viruses, would take several reproductive cycles for bacteria,

Happily, at this point, the world hasn’t *quite* yet arrived at the Theory of Microbeasts. That’s actually on our list of potential Interstitials. 🙂 At *this* time in the world of From Winter’s Ashes, it isn’t yet fully understood what causes disease and infection, but they’ve gotten pretty good through trial and error at surgical hygiene. Infectious disease is still the most common killer in this world, however.

However, yes, what you’re describing would potentially be viable, but probably not terribly practical, at least in a direct inoculation sense. Culturing conjured viruses/bacteria is theoretically possible, but would require a great deal more understanding of their nature than this world currently possesses.

> cloning of self

Possible, but the end result would be soul-less, and without magic and *conscious* cognition.

> cloning of others

As above. Useless for interrogation. Great for hideously dark applications we’re not going to discuss further.

> plague

Whether the Miasmer plague described in the Book of Saint Aysha is a physical plague or a magical one (or both) isn’t certain. It certainly had elements of both. Unfortunately, the Miracle of Saint Aysha thoroughly scoured every bit of away, so there’s no way to be certain.

> if a soul is necessary for cognition

It is, but we’ve seen that some undead systems (baseline skeletons) tend to emulate it approximately enough using adequately complex systems of runes. This is more or less baseline necromancy in a nutshell; installing a basic cognition-emulation system atop an understood chassis. Then there’s some very advanced necromancy, but you’ll have to wait until book 2 to learn more.

For an excellent treatment of entities that can be highly intelligent without being conscious, I highly recommend reading ‘Blindsight’ by Peter Watts.

I’m going to call this series of posts “fun with conjuration”. They will be broken up one idea per post if possible; otherwise this would be a lloonngg post. These are playing with the conjuration effects of the world. One of them, conjuration of antimatter, was already covered in comments under /2015/03/15/interstitial-1-selected-readings/.

Part 7 of ???
Idea: Conjuration chemistry
Per the comment reply on antimatter, rest mass of conjuration is equivalent to m=E/c^2, where ‘E’ is the energy the conjurer uses. However, for all other properties, conjurations apparently have very similar properties to the equivalent real mass. So one fundamental question is: is the chemistry the same? So if you conjure 1 cubic meter of hydrogen, does it react chemically the same as a normal cubic meter of hydrogen? If so:
…basically every chemical industry in existence would benefit immensely from the ability to create absolutely pure reactants that then vanish perfectly. A smart chemist would be able to do tricks that would make real-world chemists green with envy. Polymerization, that backbone of the plastics industry, becomes simpler when it is easy to cause certain chemical groups to suddenly lose an atom and therefore seek another group to bond with.
…similarly, but less useful, is the ability to generate temporary containers that would otherwise be infeasible in the real world, e.g. a diamond sphere to use for temporary high-pressure reactions.
…metabolized conjured compounds are deadly – when they react with other compounds and then vanish they would cause all sorts of reactions that would be abnormal and probably dangerous to life. Fats, proteins, and carbohydrates all end up in the citric acid cycle, and removal of substances from it would break the cycle and probably damage the mitochondria. People who eat conjured bread wouldn’t starve, they would poison themselves, and quickly.
…medical: temporary blood substitues (I think this one was used), or even more ambitiously, temporary organ substitutes.
…instant second wind: conjure ATP internally. It doesn’t matter if it vanishes, as long as it sticks around long enough to convert to ADP or AMP – the chemical energy remains behind. Probably dangerous and poisonous in the long run, but it should be an instant-energy shot for virtually any organism.
…let me try to break conservation (some calculations may be off – I have had some chemistry and physics, but cannot claim to be an expert). Start with one real mole of oxygen (you can use a larger volume of air). Conjure two moles of hydrogen. Conjuration cost: (1 thaum / 2809000 kg-s) [based on Teferi’s Stationary Ball of Ice] * (1 kg / 1000 g) * (1.00784 g/mole) * (2 moles) = 7.18E-10 thaum/s = 1.09E-15 J/s. Apply a spark and assume full reaction in one second: 2 H2 + O2 –> 2 H2O. Enthalpies: water is -285,820 kJ/mole; O2 to molecular O is 249,190 kJ/mole. Heat is 2*285820 – 1*249190 = 322450 kJ. Then the hydrogen vanishes, and you get the cost of O2 to molecular O back: 322450 + 249190 = 571640 kJ. Unless I am completely missing something, the efficiency is 571640 / 1.09E-15 = 5.26E20. Insane. The only way out of this is to assume conjuration products are chemically inert. If so:
…a lot of friction is based on temporary bonds, so conjured objects should be slicker than normal ones.
…most of these uses go away, but the ability to create temporary non-reacting, super-strong containers is still somewhat useful to the chemical industry.

Yes, but you have to ‘pay’ for your electronegativity. Conjuration of noble gases is ‘cheaper’ than conjuration of fluorine, for example.

Also, at this time, the FWA universe never had a reason to have a school of chemistry, exactly. Alchemy in this universe is very much a mix of the physical and metaphysical, and is steadily further improving through the use of the scientific method. Give it a few hundred years (and both an atomic and molecular theory development), and many of the applications you’re discussing may arise. At this time in the universe, though, Teferi’s research fellows haven’t come far enough along in their research to enjoy the understanding of chemical formula that we, the readers do.

So yes, reactants that vanish perfectly are already used in some applications within alchemy, but the users may not understand the *why*, just the results.

Their broken byproducts are toxic when the conjured compounds vanish from a living system. However, their toxicity isn’t necessarily immediately critical. The body has enzymes and mechanisms to correct for some of that. In-universe, conjured spices are occasionally used, and as we’ll see in book 2, there’s even restaurants that serve conjuration-altered food. Patrons understand that over-consumption of those products would result in growing sick and weak, and so it’s rarely done. But ‘rarely’ isn’t ‘never’, and the dose makes the poison.

With the assistance of some healing magic, the toxicity of the conjured product could hypothetically be held at bay. Young children, for example, must learn very early on that conjuring sweets for themselves will make them sick.

> …medical, conjured blood/organs

As a temporary and desperate substitute, yes. Would definitely not recommend.

> conjure ATP internally

Many of the Spelldancer martial artists of this world possess magic that restores their physical vigor and energy. It’s entirely possible that this mechanism might be one of many accomplishing this. However, there’s always byproducts to this concern, such as depletion of the citric acid cycle at the accelerated demand of ATP reactions, as well as, of course, waste heat. (See Faruza for glimpses into means of controlling that.)

Overall, one thing to be consciously aware of is that while conceptualizing these applications is possible, *learning* how to do it without injuring/poisoning/killing yourself is altogether another affair.

> complex napkin calculations, breaking conservation

Covered by “You pay for your electronegativity.” If anyone yet had a concept of noble gases, they’d discover that Teferi’s Momentarily Stationary Cloud of Argon would be slightly more massive than Teferi’s Stationary Ball of Ice.

I’m going to call this series of posts “fun with conjuration”. They will be broken up one idea per post if possible; otherwise this would be a lloonngg post. These are playing with the conjuration effects of the world. One of them, conjuration of antimatter, was already covered in comments under /2015/03/15/interstitial-1-selected-readings/.

Part 8 of ???

Idea: Conjuring souls

As noted in the comment on chemistry, conjurations apparently have very similar properties to the equivalent real mass for all properties except rest mass and conjuration can produce things that are too complex for the conjurer to understand. So, has anyone tried to conjure a soul?
Necessary first step: how would you tell if it worked? Spirits see souls directly, so they could be harnessed to note if soul conjuration worked. Of course, spirits get intense about souls, so you would want to start out with a relatively passive one.

Temporary conjured matter and “real” matter have differences – would temporary conjured souls and real souls have differences also? I presume that mass would be one difference. In order to tell, you would actually have to (1) conjure a soul, (2) get it confirmed, (3) bind it to a body, and (4) bind a different “real” soul to a similar body to compare the differences. In other words, (1) be a conjurer and actually try this lunacy, (2) use a spirit-pacted individual to check, and (3) and (4) get the cooperation of Victor and friends. So this test is actually workable.

But real matter can be created also, so perhaps energy-to-matter conjuration can be harnessed to create a soul! E = m*c^2 = (21 g) * (3.00E8 m/s)^2 * (1 kg / 1000 g) = 1.89E15 kg*m^2/s^2 = 1.89E15 J / (660000 J/Thaum) = 2.86E9 Thaum. At 1 Thaum = 1 person, this is more effort than it is probably worth, but it is interesting. Could a whole-soul person pact a spirit using micropayments of conjured soul? Could a person build up their own or another’s soul by such means? Even better, since we know by word-of-author that reverse Teferi’s Speck (matter to magical energy) is possible, it should be possible to turn 21 g of matter to 21 g of soul, assuming perfect technique and efficiency. Then anyone who could do it could pact a spirit without actually losing any of their soul!

(and then the commenter learns that the Divine in this system knows how to smite)

Sir, the _entirety_ of the spirit realm, the Church, and the Divine itself would like a femtosecond of your time. Please stand in this circle.

Word-of-author here: No, conjuration of soulstuff isn’t possible. If it was, conjuration of life capable of using magic would be possible. _However_, the mass of a soul in this universe is very real, and its conversion to energy is obviously possible. Further discussions get intensely spoiler-iffic for future stories set in the FWA universe, however, so that’s all I can say.

> since we know by word-of-author that reverse Teferi’s Speck (matter to magical energy) is possible

It’s theorized to be possible, but if anyone has yet figured out how to? To borrow a line from XKCD: “They promptly stopped being biology and started being physics.”

Future planned books in the FWA universe are going to go into depth on some of the international nuclear-level geopolitics of the world. We’ve barely scratched the surface on the horrible things state-level weapons research can do with magic.

“Sir, the _entirety_ of the spirit realm, the Church, and the Divine itself would like a femtosecond of your time. Please stand in this circle.”

Now that I have managed to piss off every human organization, all spirits, and the Divine, is there really a reason to continue? This is like getting a gold medal – it is all downhill from there!

Oh, wait, I haven’t figured out how to break the universe yet. A later post may get there.

More posts coming, but not today. And I haven’t even touched teleportation, the capabilities of various magics that we have already seen, and several other topics. Not to mention what happens when you start using several of the more… interesting… abilities in combination.

I’m going to call this series of posts “fun with conjuration”. They will be broken up one idea per post if possible; otherwise this would be a lloonngg post. These are playing with the conjuration effects of the world. One of them, conjuration of antimatter, was already covered in comments under /2015/03/15/interstitial-1-selected-readings/.

Part 9 of ???

Idea: Conjuring energy directly
Note that I am not talking about using magic to heat, cool, move objects, create light, etc. I am talking about using temporary conjuration to go directly to energy – after all, it works with matter that contains forms of energy (e.g. heat), so why not pure energy? Part of this is hard to wrap your head around, for example, what exactly does conjuring temporary kinetic energy look like? If it is randomized (heat), does that mean that something heats up and then shortly cools down? If it is collimated, does that mean something moves and then moves back? Weird concept. How about gravity? It would be rather cool to crush someone under 10 Earth gravities, but would it really be more efficient than a bullet?

Light would be the easy test – can a conjurer summon “temporary” light? It would then vanish after (example) one second… except for the light that has already interacted. But it really doesn’t take long for light to interact. Since temporary conjuration takes energy proportional to the time the conjuration exists, and it takes light almost no time to react, you can get more energy out of conjuring light than you put in by doing it for very short periods very quickly right next to a high-efficiency solar power panel.

If you can conjure temporary magnetic fields, you can construct a Gauss cannon – strong but vanishing magnetic fields are just what you need. Or just tear up any magnetic substance.

Then there’s the “killer ap” of conjuring energy: conjuring electrons. (I can hear the author now: “you have to ‘pay’ for your electronegativity”, but I am following the thought through anyway.). An electron masses 9.11E-31 kg. If you could conjure Teferi’s Stationary Ball of Ice worth of mass of electrons, then you get 2809000 kg / (9.11E-31 kg / electron) = 3.08E35 electrons / (6.24E18 electrons / Coulomb) = 4.94E16 Coulombs. A large lightning bolt is 350 C, so a single conjuration can temporarily summon 1.41E14 large lightning bolts. The conjurer stops being biology and starts being physics. And here’s where the author invokes “‘pay’ for your electronegativity” to say why you can’t do that, but the idea is cool. Still an easy way to generate alternating current, since the conjured electrons first disperse using nearby conductive substances and then vanish, leaving a charge imbalance that then reverses electrical flow.

One dangerous one is an attempt to summon the strong force. If it works, atomic nuclei in the area will tend to be destabalized… conjurer becomes a physics demonstration. How about going directly to the various other gauge bosons (light is covered above)?

Similarly and probably worse, attempt to summon unpaired quarks, e.g. up quarks. This one may cause the end of the world because unpaired symmetry reactions with other matter may break other matter down into strange matter. The world becomes a physics demonstration.

Then there’s the weird ones: what happens if you try to conjure time? Entropy? Tachyons? Negative energy? Antigravity (if such a thing exists)? What if they are still on ether theory and they try to summon ether (a presumably nonexistent field)?

Note that for many of these experiments, any sane observer would prefer to either 1) kill the experimenter before they start and bury the evidence or 2) observe from a different planet.

Mass is conjured and sustained by Thaumatic output, and then vanishes when that output is no longer sustained.

Energy is created and spent. (And possibly converted from the mass of a soul; confirmed in miracles, but the scale and precision required for the weighing of standard Thaumatic output simply doesn’t exist in this universe yet, you’d need some *incredibly* fine and carefully controlled weighing mechanism to determine this. It’s entirely possible that ordinary Thaumatic output simply creates the energy. Teferi’s College fellows are pretty evenly split on this, but all agree that a practical means of testing it is currently out of their engineering grasp.)

So consequently, one cannot ‘conjure’ energy in the same mechanism that one conjures mass.

We’ve seen repeatedly in From Winter’s Ashes the expenditure of energies. Heat being the most common and practical one, from Heather’s mace to just keeping themselves alive through a brutal arctic winter.

Helga’s hammer is a complex magical system, involving runes that do the following: Increase the mass and density of the hammer, increase the local gravitational potential of the hammer during the downswing, acceleration of the relative time frame to multiply the acceleration factors, and kinetic amplifiers that expend more Thaum to both improve the momentum and acceleration of the hammer, assisting in the swinging and throwing of the weapon. (And yes, with the right combination of runes and talent-set you could go full Thor with one, but that’s not Helga’s jam.)

Kinetic energy directly imparted to a projectile has been seen numerous times, from Ambrose’s bullets to cannonball-punching monks to Vital moving the bulk of blood around in the mines.

> light

Light’s a middle ground, but for practical purposes, even at a full Thaum of output, the mass of photons involved is far too tiny to factor in. We’re back to the practical 0.25-3 Thaum limit for baseline humanity. Pouring one’s full Thaum into light would be one hell of a show. Goggles recommended.

> magnetic fields, gauss weaponry

Magnetics and magic are already in use by some systems, but very poorly understood.

Gauss weaponry is an engineering dead end in this universe. When you can already pour Thaum into a projectile to accelerate it (and 660k J/sec is a LOT of acceleration!), your bigger engineering challenge is simply making a projectile that can survive the acceleration and strike accurately. There’s no real advantage to such a weapon system, and a lot of efficiency losses.

> crushing someone with gravity

Hilariously inefficient, but perfectly possible.

> conjuring electrons

Thaum, Joules limit, etc. Teferi’s College regrets to inform you that you will not be causing an electron catastrophe today.

> quarks

We’re a few centuries away from that depth of understanding in particle theory in this universe. Something for sober minds to think about in centuries to come, certainly.

> Still an easy way to generate alternating current

Book 2 already has a planned interstitial, where we’re going to see the magical equivalent of an electric guitar. There’s really not much cultural or engineering point in distinguishing between ‘electricity’ and ‘magic’ in this universe, after all.

> strong force, and various other gauge bosons

Still regulated by the Thaum requirement, but this is possible. Persephone’s bubble-ward is a lot weirder than it seems at first glance. Without spoilers, we’ve seen that it affects kinetic energy, temperature, and even the wavelengths of light passing through it. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out the precise mechanism(s) of her ward-bubble. The clues are there.

> conjure time

You can’t ‘conjure’ time, but you can definitely do localized relative adjustments to it. Faruza’s terrifying potential as a Chronitor have barely been scratched at.

> kill the experimenter before they start and bury the evidence

For reasons sad, terrible, and necessary, we’re going to see a LOT of this in future From Winter’s Ashes universe stories. Intellectual revolutions might just have more casualties than political revolutions in this world.